The present invention is directed to a method for providing more informative results in response to a search of electronic documents. In particular, the present invention is directed to a method for providing document attribute information together with document addresses as part of the presentation of the results of a database search.
The use of the Internet as an information resource continues to grow. More and more information sites or servers are connected to the Internet and information seekers conduct more and more searches in this database. The searches are typically performed by search engines such as Alta Vista, Yahoo, and others. These search engines are adapted to receive queries from users where the queries incorporate certain key words. Typically, when a search engine presents the results of the search, it provides an identification of the documents found as a consequence of the search. The identification may include a document title and typically includes an identification of the address of the document. In the Internet environment this address is the Universal Resource Locator (URL) that is associated with the web page or document found by the search engine. It is also common to provide the user with a quick way of getting to the cited web page such as by providing a link, such as a hypertext link, to that web page in connection with the search results. It would be beneficial if the search engine returned additional information beyond the address of the document so that the user will be better informed for selecting among a plurality of documents identified as being responsive to the search query.
The present invention is directed to a method for providing more informative results to a user in connection with the search of a database. In particular, the present invention provides a method by which the user is provided not only with an address of a document responsive to a search request, but also attribute information regarding that document. In the Internet environment search engines typically return URLs. The present invention provides a method for augmenting these URLs to incorporate document attribute information thereby providing the end user with a more informative set of results to the search conducted in the database. In accordance with the invention the search engine or indexer may identify a document attribute and index that document. The indexer could then associate both the index and the document attribute with the document address. Then, when the search engine receives a query, the engine searches for query results and presents the address and the document attribute in reporting results.
In a modification of the present invention the search engine is adapted to receive not only a key word search query but also an identification of a desirable document attribute. The search engine then searches the database based on the search query and presents addresses of documents satisfying the query including satisfying the desired document attribute.
As a result, the present invention provides an improved presentation of information to a user interested-in finding documents having certain characteristics among documents stored in a database.